Posted
by
Soulskill
on Monday April 16, 2012 @02:02PM
from the information-doesn't-want-to-cross-the-border dept.

AstroPhilosopher writes "The U.S. Supreme Court will hear an appeal from a Thai student who was fined $600,000 for re-selling textbooks. Trying to make ends meet, the student had family members in Thailand mail him textbooks that were made and purchased abroad, which he then resold in the U.S. It's a method many retailers practice every day. 'Discount sellers like Costco and Target and Internet giants eBay and Amazon help form an estimated $63 billion annual market for goods that are purchased abroad, then imported and resold without the permission of the manufacturer. The U.S.-based sellers, and consumers, benefit from the common practice of manufacturers to price items more cheaply abroad than in the United States. This phenomenon is sometimes called a parallel market or grey market.'"

Discount sellers like Costco and Target and Internet giants eBay and Amazon help form an estimated $63 billion annual market for goods that are purchased abroad, then imported and resold without the permission of the manufacturer.

As someone who once foolishly bought a robotics book used on Amazon ($8) that was supposed to be the real thing ($80) and instead received an Indian release version, I must say that I do not see the parallels here. First off, the Costco case [slashdot.org] applied to goods made inside the US -- not goods made outside the US like this case. These are two mutually exclusive sets of products so it's quite different in that the big retailers re-import goods made here. I find this to be a painfully important discrepancy since, especially in this case, books and other copyrighted material have very strict distribution channels. I'm not saying its right. I'm not saying it's how things should be. I'm just telling you it's how they are. And these publishers enter contracts with affiliates in other nations. A book's value is mostly determined by its content and when you're marking that down in a foreign country through a foreign distributor, it's massively different than marking down a BMW in Mexico or a wristwatch in Switzerland. The watch and car are tangible goods that may have some intrinsic value and copyright but more importantly provide a functionality. This is not the case with the textbook. I would guess in the case of college textbooks, this guy was breaking many more laws than in the case of the watch -- especially given the United States' ridiculous laws governing copyright. In the case of my purchased textbooks, the quality of the book was horrid. A paperback binding that fell apart almost instantly and seemed to be held together with potato paste with graphs I could not read since the ink was so shoddy compared to glossy thick hardcover American release. Still, the words were the same words... and I passed the course.

I don't give a shit if the Megacorp doesn't like that I purchased a cheap paperback Indian copy instead of the overpriced, glossybacked American copy. Sucks to be them. It's not my responsibility to bendover and kiss its ass..... it is not my girlfriend. I have every right as a free citizen (not a megacorp slave) to buy the cheapest copy I can find. It's called free trade.

I don't give a shit if the Megacorp doesn't like that I purchased a cheap paperback Indian copy instead of the overpriced, glossybacked American copy. Sucks to be them. It's not my responsibility to bendover and kiss its ass..... it is not my girlfriend. I have every right as a free citizen (not a megacorp slave) to buy the cheapest copy I can find. It's called free trade.

I like how mod my comments are modded as Troll when I'm trying to explain why the situation is what it is yet your profanity laden brash response without any understanding of the concept is moderated as "Insightful."

So this is my problem with Slashdot and why I come back here only to be constantly reminded to stay away and let the people circle jerk with blinders on. I'll let someone else waist their time explaining how the world works to you folk, you clearly never learned to appreciate someone merel

I like how mod my comments are modded as Troll when I'm trying to explain why the situation is what it is

AND took pains to point out you weren't endorsing the status quo. Aside from putting "I'm not saying its right. I'm not saying it's how things should be. I'm just telling you it's how they are" in bold, it would have been hard to make your point any more clear.

Forget reading the article, these days we don't even bother reading the post we're responding to.

Good luck upsetting the publishing business with your brilliant views! Burst forth, you need only say these words and hundreds of years of international copyright law will crumble!

One can only hope. The books are the same, we know we're paying over, way and above what the textbooks can be covered for. We end up having to pay for 'minor' revisions to keep concurrent or fail classes. When I was working my way through my law classes a few years ago, the textbooks alone set me back nearly $4000. Though I could buy them out of country, with the same content for $250.

People understand very well how the world works. What you fail to understand is that people are tired of DRM, region locking, overpriced for the same material you can get elsewhere especially in a global economy where you can order something from across the ocean and pay 7/8th's less on the price. So when people want something, they find someplace cheaper to buy it.

Hey are you gonna blast canadians next for buying american products cheaper across the border too? With regards to just about everything? I mean a gallon of milk and butter are in the $4-6 range, sure would be nice to have it like the US where it costs $1.99 or less, flat of eggs only $5 or $1.50 in the US. Or americans buying canadian drugs at a cheaper price when they know that they only have to travel a few hours to get there?

While not $1.99, there was a gallon of 2% milk priced at $2.47 in Bellingham. For us just above the border, a gallon of the same costs $4.89+ (I've seen a gallon of milk with a sticker price of $5.99 here.) It's pretty sad.

Not only that, thanks to the dairy lobbyists, we can only bring back $20 of dairy per person on a visit to the US. Anything above that amount is taxed at 300%. I doubt many Canadians know that until they go over the limit...

If you want American milk, go get it from the US. There are a lot of really good reasons why Canada has a dairy quota and why we don't import American milk. I'll give you one: rBGH. That's "genetically engineered bovine growth hormone". Yum. You can keep your cheap American milk.

The milk I buy in the supermarket in the US is also rbgh-free. It's required to come with a legal blurb saying that the FDA has not approved any benefit to hormone-free milk. Despite this, it's been years since I've seen a container of milk that doesn't claim to be free of synthetic hormones. (I live in the northeastern US)

Or americans buying canadian drugs at a cheaper price when they know that they only have to travel a few hours to get there?

My cousin is (hopefully) recovering from cancer, with the help of international drugs because the domestics were either too expensive or not available. It seems like this whole "free trade" agreement, isn't.

But how many of the professors are viciously examining text versions and reworking their classes to only use the new pages?

I had a fun variant of this one time when I got hold of a free copy of an older version of a text book (like V2 vs V4) and it was BETTER than the current version! I am a Preface & Introduction junkie, so I compared. The 2nd Ed that I acquired was all "Thanks for da luv in the first edition, here's the second, off you go". The 4th ed went "We have trimmed and tightened the material for maximum educational impact by reducing the extraneous material that might distract from the topic at hand. Then we added more big pictures and huge 3 inch margins on the page."

I used the older copy, kept the new one only to watch for sneak shots, and an hour extra per week I had better context than anyone else in the class because my copy was 5 pages longer per chapter.

I get what you're saying about the legalities, but this really isn't a copyright issue, is it? This kid isn't attempting to publish the books or claim authorship, he's reselling. If he worked at Goldman Sachs and were buying pork bellies or oil in one market and reselling in another, that would be called "arbitrage". Of course, Goldman Sachs is wealthy enough to afford lawyers to tell others to f*ck off, or pay for favorable legal rulings (or laws themselves, or even politicians).

Sorry, but fundamentally Megacorp(s) don't get to have all the advantages and benefits of free trade (outsourcing production to where their costs are low), and none of the disadvantages and drawbacks. At least, not in a fair world and not in a "free market". I remember a "free market" existing when producers and consumers get choices, not when the producer gets the government to clamp down on imports so the local market is captive, all the while outsourcing production and booking profits through offshore shell corporations.

I get what you're saying about the legalities, but this really isn't a copyright issue, is it? This kid isn't attempting to publish the books or claim authorship, he's reselling.

No, it's a copyright issue. The content industries (and the appeals court) take the position that while copyright protection applies across the entire Berne convention, that copyright exhaustion -- the idea that by selling a particular copy, the copyright holder no longer can control distribution of that particular copy -- applies on a country by country basis. And that therefore importing a copy of a copyrighted item without the permission of the copyright holder, even when that item was lawfully sold in the country of origin in the first place, is illegal.

It's absolutely unjust and ridiculous (just like much of copyright law) -- which means the Supreme Court will probably support it.

It's absolutely unjust and ridiculous (just like much of copyright law) -- which means the Supreme Court will probably support it.

It isn't unjust in and of itself, but a means of maintaining an injustice that all of us rich westerners profit from.

I'm willing to wager everyone reading this owns a lot of things produced in cheaper, underdeveloped countries with poor labour and human rights laws. We can afford to buy lots of their stuff because they're paid less for their time than we are.

Our authors expect similar wages to us as consumers, so books are priced to give them something worthwhile. But people in poorer countries can't afford this. The authors accept a lower profit in poorer countries, because that's the only way they'll get anything out of them.

Now, if the UN passed a resolution demanding free trade rules be applied to all IP-based goods, do you think suppliers would adopt first-world prices or third-world prices...? So what we'd be left with is a world where only people in rich countries can afford university textbooks. Which would reduce the education level in developing countries, making them poorer. And also less qualified to make cheap goods for us.

They resent $megacorp firing six pound an hour guy and paying penny a day a pittance, then turning around and charging us as if they were employing the Brit. Not only that, but demanding that we do so or face legal consequences.

The only resentment here is against the stacked system, in which large corporate interests get to use the global market for labour and materials but small retailers and private individuals are legally restricted from doing the same for goods and services.

This perpetuates the problems of segregation and inequality. What if penny-a-day guy has a brother who wants to export from the local market to a British retailer at a small markup? There's a price gradient he could use to better himself and bring money to his country.

Slavery was a big issue of the day but it is not the fundamental cause of the cival war. The cival war was about the extent of power the federal government should have over the individual states. The only good thing to come from the cival war was the abolishion of slavery. Pryior to the cival war most people thought of the states as "States" (i.e. nations) that agreed to federalize forming a stronger union. For many in the southern states the idea that they could be told that they could not secede from the union was unthinkable. Today, thanks largely to the cival war, we now have a federal government that tries to run every aspect of our lives.

The federal government has gone so far that they take about 30% of our work as their own in the form of federal taxes. They call it an income tax, but ignore the fact that individuals don't make income. All the money that we make is payment for labor or services rendard. That means that your salery is a trade between you and your employer for your time, and a trade does not consttitute income. Your time belongs to you but the federal government thinks that about 30% of your time belongs to them. THAT IS MODERN DAY SLAVERY. It is inforced by a federal agency called the I.R.S. who have permission from the federal government to destroy your life if you do not surender your time to the government. All of that to say this The cival war may have ended slavery based on race, but it opened the door for the enslavement of all of america to the federal government.

Well, sorry Eldavojohn, his post accurately reflects my stance on the subject and points out the fact that this flies in the face of free trade. So he gets an insightful point. He wasn't exactly eloquent with his justification as some of the others below, but he was first. Plus I'm personally enraged by the prices I suffered at the hands of the textbook overlords. The system obviously screwed me over pretty hard and I had little power to stop it. So chucking in a swear word here or there also adds accuracy.
It's only a circle-jerk because we're probably right. The blinders are off though. We see how the system ought to be, and can explain why. When others explain why it should be differently, they're usually screwing someone over.

I really don't see your point with the "very strict distribution channels". That's lovely for them, but why do I give a shit? I can buy one for X, own it, walk over here, and someone wants it for X+Y.

"mutually exclusive sets of products" my ass.

A book's value is mostly determined by its content and when you're marking that down in a foreign country through a foreign distributor, it's massively different than marking down a BMW in Mexico or a wristwatch in Switzerland.

I disagree. If he was scanning in and redistributing that content, sure, totally different. Yay cheap and trivial digital distribution. But he isn't. The book is a tangible good. With utility. You passed your class, didn't you? Not that much different from a BMW or a watch.

Now, in terms of quality, truth in advertising, and scamming in general, sure, this guy could very well deserve to be fined. But not for any of the reasons you stated. While you're normally a pretty insightful fellow, you failed to contribute anything meaningful to this conversation. You may say "I'm not saying it's right", but then you provide (bad) justifications for why it's right... Talking out both sides of your face is disingenuous, at best.

I have every right as a free citizen (not a megacorp slave) to buy the cheapest copy I can find. It's called free trade.

It's only called free trade if it benefits the Megacorp. If it benefits a mere mortal, it's called infringement. What it actually infringes isn't quite clear, since you aren't actually copying anything, but that's unimportant. What's important is that the Megacorp paid good money to have the laws written and interpreted for its favour.

I don't give a shit if the Megacorp doesn't like that I purchased a cheap paperback Indian copy instead of the overpriced, glossybacked American copy. Sucks to be them. It's not my responsibility to bendover and kiss its ass..... it is not my girlfriend. I have every right as a free citizen (not a megacorp slave) to buy the cheapest copy I can find. It's called free trade.

I don't believe this case is about your ability to purchase cheap indian paperback books. This case is about a Thai student's ability to

Damn right. These huge corporations are able to go wherever is most financially beneficial to their interests when they're scoping out labor and raw materials, but they want to try and region-lock the final product so that we can't do exactly the same fucking thing and get around their arbitrarily inflated prices? Give me a fucking break...

If these assholes can go to India or China to have these books made for 3 fucking cents a piece, I should be able to go buy one there for a nickle if I choose to do so. If they want to region-lock the books, then they need to be forced to region-lock the fucking labor so that we're not being bent over due to the economic disparity between the first world and the third world.

The fact that it's not limited to tangible goods but services (i.e., call centers) these days is even more ridiculous. All of these companies claim they must do this to remain "competitive" but the cost savings are never passed along to the consumer. Books are just as expensive today as they ever were, if not more so. Even eBooks and eTextbooks cost a ridiculous amount when you take into account the fact that there is almost no overhead after the book itself is completed, and since they can't entirely stop students from sharing eTextbooks, well, they just build it in to your fucking tuition now. Remember when you could go to the library and borrow an expensive textbook you couldn't afford as you needed it and 'get by'? No more of that communist bullshit allowed, am I right? You filthy socialists get back in the fields and make room for the rich kids who can properly afford their education...

Just another 20th century institution trying to shove a 20th century business model into a 21st century market. I won't shed a fucking tear for these assholes when they're belly up, because the book publishers have been ripping off authors for far, far longer than the RIAA and MPAA have been, and there ain't no sympathy here for those fuckwads either, believe me. I just wish more schools would tell these publishers to go pound sand and move to open source textbooks, but unfortunately, this kind of thing is just as politically motivated (and corruptible) as anything else these days. Too much money involved, too many palms being greased...same old song and fucking dance...

You start giving a shit really fast when they serve you with legal papers demanding $600,000. If you just ignore those, you'll end up with the cops knocking on your door and a free trip to the local jail while the lawyers sort things out for you.

Remember, you can sue anyone for anything -- only the courts have been granted the power to determine whether the case has merit (either by hearing it, or if its really stupid, just tossing it out.)

So you are arguing that, as a free citizen, it is OK for you to purchased illegal copies of a book? Or are you arguing that no written material should be able to have copyright protections?

Also, what does the size of the publishing company have to do with publishing/copying rights?

Is it his responsibility to know that it is illegal? And more to the point, by which basis are they illegal? I buy Book A from the campus bookstore, and I buy Book B from an overseas distributor for a fraction of the cost. A is identical to B. I understand that it is illegal, but purchasing books in this way is in no way unethical and to my (admittedly unlawyer-like mind) is far more important.

Your avoiding the main question. Why is it illegal? Because it's against copyright is not an answer. Why the hell does copyright say it is not okay to buy books in one country and sell them in another? What is the law protecting? Is it just a business model? If so, then that is not good enough.

These are copies of a book *LEGALLY* published and sold by the Asian subsidiaries of US publishing houses. How the f*ck are they illegal? The question is whether or not copyright law can restrict if they can be imported and resold.

I'm not the OP, and I am not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice. I would argue that first sale should cover things that are "licensed only for region X" to also be used in region Y; that a sale of an information good to the general public include a license that can be re-sold, and that region restrictions cannot apply.

As it is, I believe that isn't generally applied; copyright licenses are granted by area, and importing into a different area for re-sale is not necessarily legal. I'm not sure if import

I bought the (official) International Students Edition of a well-known electronics book (in the UK, delivered from America). The paper is a bit rougher and thinner and the two-tone graphics were greyscale, and the binding was a bit flimsier, but everything was the same. If anything, it was more useful as it was lighter than the alternative solid slab of glossy paper, and smelled much nicer! All in all, it cost me about a third of the cost of the book in the UK, including shipping from the States. I wasn't about to pay three times the price so I can have unecessary colour in my textbook!

What did interest me was a bit white box on the cover saying "this book is for sale only in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Myanmar". Seems the DVD-style region codes extend to books as well. Whatever happened to the global market?

On the other hand, my cunningly acquired early edition of a maths textbook were printed in the days when the answer to a log question started with "from your tables". But it still had the right answers and all the material I needed. A set of Stroud for under £10 is worth it even just for the doorstop capability.

Good question. About a decade ago I bought several 12-hour S-VHS tapes from england. For whatever reason JVC refused to sell any tape longer than 9 hours on U.S. shores, perhaps to force customers to buy more of them.

About a decade ago I bought several 12-hour S-VHS tapes from england. For whatever reason JVC refused to sell any tape longer than 9 hours on U.S. shores, perhaps to force customers to buy more of them.

Did you actually check the running times of the tapes? IIRC, VHS tapes in PAL machines run at a different speed to VHS tapes in NTSC machines, so it may be that the actual length of tape was the same, but they were marked differently for the different markets.

>>>A VHS tape labelled "12 hours" in england would be labelled "8.4 hours" in the US

Nope. A tape labled "11.5 hours" in the UK holds exactly 12 hours on U.S. VCRs. I knew exactly what I was getting before I bought it and actual recording confirms I get 12 TV shows per tape. (Aside: In Digital VHS mode these same imported tapes can hold 40 hours of SD video.)

Its not nearly profitable enough. If you sell at a single high price, those living in less wealthy nations won't be able to afford it. If you sell at a single low price, you're not doing enough to suck dry those living in more wealthy nations.

Its a form of price discrimination [wikipedia.org] and is a monopolistic practice (unsurprising, given that copyright intentionally grants a no-longer-very-limited monopoly over the production and distribution of covered works.)

Well, typically for electronics at least, the exporter sells the goods at a huge discount, because the distributor on the other end is supposed to provide all of the manuals, support, warranty service, etc. Now you buy one of those "bare" pieces of electronics, bring it to the US, and sell it here to some unsuspecting slob. He then tries to get warranty service and finds out he's been ripped off.

That should be a crime.

But a book? It's nothing but mashed up paper. Presumably it was bought legally over there, and from there on it's private property. First sale, anyone?

602. Infringing importation of copies or phonorecords
(a)
Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106 [17 USC 106], actionable under section 501 [17 USC 501].

"(B) importation or exportation, for the private use of the importer or exporter and not for distribution, by any person with respect to no more than one copy or phonorecord of any one work at any one time, or by any person arriving from outside the United States or departing from the United States with respect to copies or phonorecords forming part of such person’s personal baggage"

Of course, if you buy and bring with you two or more copies - say, as gifts for several people - then you're violating the law.

WOW! So every time I go to Japan and buy a copy of the Yomiuri Shinbun and bring it with me to the US I am violating the law....

If you do it with the intent to distribute and not simply own. Copyright includes the ability to license distribution rights, and customs laws deal with personal use differently than commercial use.

I can license one company to distribute my work in England and another company altogether for the US. They've paid me for those rights. What good is that license if the British company can simply import my work into the US and sell it here? All licenses become, effectively, worldwide, despite differences in law

First off, the Costco case applied to goods made inside the US -- not goods made outside the US like this case.

The Costco case was about goods made outside the USA (i.e. Switzerland in the Costco case). It is the reason why the SCOTUS ruled not to overturn the lower courts ruling.

From the Forbes [forbes.com] article linked to in the/. summary of the Costco case.

The Supreme Court, in a 4:4 decision, refused to overturn a Ninth Circuit decision limiting the first-sale doctrine to U.S.-produced goods. The decision upholds the right of manufacturers — in this case, Swiss watchmaker Omega — to use copyright laws to prevent U.S. retailers from selling goods they obtained overseas.

Unless the Forbes summary is wrong, I think your comment needs to be reworked in light of these facts.

It seems that this student has quite a legal obstacle to clear in this case. I hope some group takes over his representation to challenge the previous SCOTUS split ruling (assuming the case has merit), as the Costco Wholesale Corp. v. Omega S.A. Ninth Circuit decision was deleterious to the USA (and possibly world) economy. USA copyright law is a dead weight loss to the USA economy in general; the Costco case extended USA copyright law's application to our detriment.

...especially given the United States' ridiculous laws governing copyright.

You mean like the doctrine of first sale? Which very specifically means that once you buy a book, it is yours to do with as you please. For this guy to ever have been fined at all, must have been based on some weird import rules/tariffs. So, despite your rants and name-calling, it seems that perhaps you have some deficiencies in your understanding of the situation.

Yes, we all know that publishers create strict arrangements with their distributors which limit where those distributors can resell the books. The question is whether those private arrangements are binding on people who aren't party to the agreement.

Everything you say is true, but beside the point. You seem to be asserting that if a company works really hard toward some goal that somehow it is the role of the law to prevent others from doing things that undermine that goal. While I can certainly understan

Or you could, you know, work to attain a political system where money is less of a requirement for electability. There are many ways to make significant inroads. Banning political television advertisement would be one such thing.

There are no such ways. Wealth and power are intimately linked, and always have been. And always will be.

You can sometimes short-circuit that fact for a couple of generation or two via revolution if you manage to install sufficiently enlightened leaders, but that only lasts for as long as those leaders stay alive and stay enlightened. Once leadership changes you're back to a random grab-bag of power-grubbers trying to take over (and it will eventually will, even if its due to death by old age.)

The whole idea of limited term political positions is to undermine the above truth -- no bad-egg politicians will be around long enough to do significant harm (of course, the flip side is that no good politicians are around long enough to do long-term good either.)

Of course what we see nowadays (and probably have ever since the last founding-father-equivalent died or left politics in any country) is rather than a single long-term politician, we get groups of them working in collusion to attain their long-term goals.

Which is kind of worse in a way, since "good" people are generally not the type to conspire and collude in order to progress their agendas.

That said, there are definitely things that could be done to improve the situation. The primary one being a complete ban of campaign contributions -- all campaign money should come from public coffers and be distributed equally among the running parties in any jurisdiction.

Of course some oversight would be necessary or people would just "run" in order to get some free money without any intention to win, but that's a bit of a side issue. And of course there would still be back-room bribery to watch out for, but that's already illegal so no big stepping stone there.

I'd almost say personal contributions to your own campaign should be banned. Allowing even those produces a situation where the independently wealthy have an innate, non-political advantage over those who aren't so lucky, but might still have a solid platform.

Its still a long way from perfect, but it would go a long way towards killing the current corporatocracy that we're facing in much of the "democratic" world.

Hence deregulation to transfer the savings of the American people away from them, inequitable free trade to eliminate jobs and suppress wages, and the levying of private taxes by Big Carbon and "high finance"/"the speculators" [thinkprogress.org] in order to ensure that the many have ever less money to pool together.

When I was doing my MBA, I was able to find "international versions" of textbooks on Ebay or the like. They were identical to the domestic versions but were not hardcover, in some cases printed on cheap paper - those kinds of differences. Nice way to save yourself 50% or so.

I'm not sure why publishers foist the high-grade materials on everyone especially at the college level where the book will never be used again - that is, unless it's meant to be fit for resale.

I did the same for my BT. Once in a while, the international version would have the page numbers slightly off or somesuch, but nothing major. I never noticed a quality difference between them and the US versions my classmates had.

You have an excellent point about the high-grade materials for a book with minor re-useability. Of the 30 or so books I had for college, I only kept 4 of them - none of which were intended to be textbooks.

Often times the differences between versions is that the questions at the end of the chapter will just be reordered and maybe a couple of minor tweaks here and there in the text. The versioning is really just a racket to try to shut down the used book market. I've had teachers that support multiple versions of a book by simply handing out problems like so:

Questions 2, 5, 8, 11, and 19 for version 5 owners, 5, 8, 9, 13, and 14 for version 6 owners. Since the rest of the content was the same this was basically no extra work on their part, since they had to go through and pick the new questions when the new version came out anyway, so they just picked the same ones as the previous year's. The textbook industry is such a racket.

the contracts are done with the printing houses - not with the people who actually buy the books and bring them to their homes. why should they be barred from selling their physical goods to another country?

there are distribution channels and contracts that prevent someone in, say New Delhi, from noticing that their Addison Wesley book on Modern Evolution sells exceptionally well in the states so they are just going to set up an online store, right?

Why would this be relevant to anyone who isn't party to those contracts? The first reseller in New Dehli would be bound by that contract, but why their customer or that person's American customer?

Is this going to turn into another Blizzard EULA situation where they argue ownership of a book doesn't change hands when someone buys^H^H^H^H enters into a reading agreement?

This isn't a contractual issue. This is a copyright issue. No one is claiming breach of contract. Furthermore, the defendant in this case never entered into any sort of contract with the publisher. He purchased books on the open market and resold them on the open market. The plaintiffs are claiming copyright infringement.
This should be a clear cut example of the first sale doctrine, and should have never gotten beyond a district court.

Yes, this is a copyright issue. And there is a law [cornell.edu] which expressedly makes illegal what the guy was doing. It's a very bad law, if you ask my opinion, but it's on the books, so there's no way the court could have ruled other than how it did.

The contracts apply to the seller in New Delhi. They do NOT apply to a 3rd party that buys from them and then re-imports to the U.S.

As for the rest, if the corporations have the right to take advantage of economy mis-matches to funnel U.S. jobs to cheap overseas labor, then surely the People in the U.S. have just as much right to take advantages of economy mis-matches to funnel sales to cheap overseas sellers. Or are they expected to somehow keep paying 1st world prices when their wages are becoming more 3rd world like by the day?

You do understand that there are distribution channels and contracts that prevent someone in, say New Delhi, from noticing that their Addison Wesley book on Modern Evolution sells exceptionally well in the states so they are just going to set up an online store, right?

So what? These contracts are not binding on third parties. Under long-established law (the doctrine of first sale) if you buy a book, you are free to sell or lend it to whoever you want. Copyright law prevents the creation of unauthorized copies; it isn't intended to enforce a publisher's specific international business model.

..in which you decide how much the product costs not based on how much the product costs to make, but on how much money the potential buyer has. parallel or gray market is just a term the content holders would like to use, since it doesn't make them look like asshats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination [wikipedia.org]

it's bullshit, of course. too bad for the publishers that books don't come with drm chips.

(I'm assuming that in this case the books were original - as in printed with copyright holders permission).

Let's say Addison Wesley publishes a text book on Modern Evolution and it runs you a steep $90 here in the United States. Unsurprisingly, as the gatekeepers of that copyright, some of us actually shell that out. Well, universities in India are going to want access to this same material but there's a problem and I think you know what it is. That much money means a lot more in India than it does in the United States. So we have publishers wanting to sell textbooks in India to college students but the most anybody can really afford is $9. What's worse, if they don't release a version at that price, they're just going to bootleg it anyway. So the solution is to engage in, as you put it, "price discrimination" or as I might call it distribution values based on localized income since they want to make these materials available but they want to also make a profit in first world countries.

If you want to turn the screws on the publishers and say international trade laws are all bullshit and the books worth what it's worth and you're only paying $9 for the Indian version, I assure you they'll just sell it at $90 everywhere in the world and try to deal with the bootlegging in a much less understanding way than they are right now.

I see you replied to my post in another question about why the end consumer shouldn't be able to resell to another country. In cases of one or two books, I don't think anybody really gives a damn, it's when you're putting yourself through college on a publishers dime that they start to get upset and bring up international trade laws against you. I'm pretty sure with how copyright law works in the states and even abroad by distribution channels that this kid is going to be screwed pretty hard.

it's bullshit, of course. too bad for the publishers that books don't come with drm chips.

No, it's too bad for the publishers that they are trying to sell books cheaper inside poorer countries.

I may be speaking from inexperience here, but the problem you're highlighting is a big circular clusterfuck.

Going back to ancient times, once a book is published the first time, it can be copied. When book-copying labor (scribes with pens) was scarce, books were scarce--but at the same time, anyone could be in the business of copying books, if they had the education and a steady hand; demand for more books was virtually infinite, as there were plenty of libraries or individuals that would pay for a copy of, say, philosophy, or math, or something else interesting. (Of course, it was dependent on local demand specifically, or any travelling traders you could sell to, and those are different...) When book copying first became industrial (printing press), book publication (both copying and first edition) became a centralized industry, with a large overhead that had to do with labor, machine costs, and transportation. But because you were doing it in bulk, you could absorb the overhead with margins on each book sold instead of sustaining yourself on a sell-by-sell basis.

The book industry now faces two problems: it's incredibly easy to print things (albeit in variable quality), and book copying is now digital: instantaneous and costing virtually nothing. We are back where we were at the beginning, where anyone could get into the business of copying books--and thanks to digital communications, books created anywhere can be printed and distributed anywhere. Book publication as a centralized industry can only exist with the digital equivalent of mercantilism, which means that book publication as an industry needs to use its money as a leverage to prevent the industry from collapsing.

Basically, if the entire book industry collapsed in a pile of dust tomorrow, and there never again was a centralized book publishing regime, we wouldn't lose access to many books. There would be lots of scanning and trading, and a lot of books published digitally and independently, either to be printed locally or used on some sort of reader. Maybe--maybe--certain authors that could only thrive on a centralized industry would fail, but a new decentralized industry would be born. Basically the only people who really, severely don't want that to happen are people who depend on the system as-is, and unfortunately, many of them have been filling out their wallets on those margins for a long time. It'd be nice for them to stop being selfish, but their worldview and their current jobs rely on this system, so I guess it's only to be expected that they think in those terms.

Let's say Addison Wesley publishes a text book on Modern Evolution and it runs you a steep $90 here in the United States. Unsurprisingly, as the gatekeepers of that copyright, some of us actually shell that out. Well, universities in India are going to want access to this same material but there's a problem and I think you know what it is. That much money means a lot more in India than it does in the United States. So we have publishers wanting to sell textbooks in India to college students but the most anybody can really afford is $9. What's worse, if they don't release a version at that price, they're just going to bootleg it anyway. So the solution is to engage in, as you put it, "price discrimination" or as I might call it distribution values based on localized income since they want to make these materials available but they want to also make a profit in first world countries.

You've explained why this is a dilemma for publishers. What you haven't explained is why anyone outside the publishing industry should give a crap about their business model.

You do not have a right to make a profit in business. Just because someone is doing something that makes it harder for your business to be profitable doesn't mean that it is, or should be, illegal. And rest assured that if the shoe was on the other foot, the publishing companies would have no compunction about eating someone else's financial lunch.

I don't per se think you're a shill, but you've explained the same thing multiple times without really explaining how what this kid did is wrong. He bought a book. He signed no contract, agreed to no user agreement, did nothing except go to a store and purchase an item. The book itself is a licensed instance of the copyrighted work, authorized by the copyright holder. By the doctrine of first sale, he now owns that item and can sell it. He comes here, and sells his book. Now obviously what upsets the

As a Business PhD I know said to a book rep that last visited him, "You are on the wrong side of history." Since the value is "in the words" as you say, they need to reduce the costs of those words.

The current pricing model is not sustainable. Globalization doesn't just work in favor of the big corporations. Technology will never allow such high pricing discrepancies to exist. As long as there are such large profits to be made on the arbitrage of textbooks, there will be a market. It's been a year since I bought a brand new US edition for my Masters program. I've probably saved nearly a thousand dollars. And I hate to break it to you, but even the professors are looking for ways to reduce student costs which many times includes allowing multiple editions for class.

If you are shilling for the textbook industry, I would recommend you start looking for another line of work. Between, international edition arbitrage, eBook sharing, and open source companies like Flatworld, the future isn't looking too bright.

Let's start with me saying that I think you are right in thinking the publishers are price-gouging - but your argument isn't sufficient to show that.

A publisher has a cost of C for creating the content of a book, and an incremental cost of I for producing a copy, it sells at price P, and it sells X copies. It will have an incremental income of P-I for each copy sold, and a total profit on the project of (copies sold)*(price - incremental cost) - content costs (X*(P-I) - C).

I am all for price discrimination; I just do not support the use of legalized force to enforce it! If you can make and sell the same product cheaper overseas, or to people with different genes, or whatever, more power to you. But if I buy your product, then I own your product, which gives me the right to sell your product under terms agreeable to me. To assert otherwise is to assert that I am your slave. Either I own myself and my property rights, or you do, and one of these scenarios is slavery.

As a Canadian, it was especially annoying when our dollar was worth more than the US dollar. Even now they are on par to 3 decimal places, yet bookstores charge the prices printed on the cover regardless of the current exchange rate.

Grad students studying in the US have been buying & selling "International Edition" textbooks for ages. When I studied in a masters program some years ago, a majority of Chinese students used International Edition books that they had presumably purchased from another international student within the US who no longer needed the book anymore. These books were generally of lower quality than the regular edition US textbooks (i.e., soft cover, sometimes black and white instead of color, etc.), but the words & graphs were all the same, and for a huge discount you couldn't go wrong. After seeing so many of my classmates using these international editions, I began purchasing them myself (and selling them when I finished the course).

It never occurred to me that selling these could possibly be grounds for a major fine. To me, this is just as bad an idea as region coding on DVD's or disallowing Americans from purchasing pharmaceuticals abroad.

To me, this is just as bad an idea as region coding on DVD's or disallowing Americans from purchasing pharmaceuticals abroad.

It's worse really. In the case of DVDs it's a technical hurdle not a legal one. If you buy a region free DVD player or import one no one says you can't use the DVD just because you're in the wrong region. You just have to go through the trouble of getting a technical solution to a technical problem. Granted some of those solutions are themselves illegal (cracking the encryption to make a "software" region free DVD player), but to my knowledge there's nothing illegal about buying a DVD player in Japan, bringing it here and playing Japanese region DVDs on it. The case of pharmaceuticals has at least a valid safety argument. It's pretty clear that safety is not the only, or even the primary, reason for the rules; but at least there's at least something to the argument.

Here it's just, "you can't do that because you're costing a company some money they might make".

Normally I'm not a grammar Nazi, and I'm sure someone could find some fault in this post too. That said, based on your writing ability, it's not easy to accept your advice on the value of a college education.

Don't people use photocopiers anymore? no, they grab a torrent of the PDF of the book. I can find and download most textbooks in less time that it take you to walk to the copier.
Most students can do it faster than that.

As long as custom is paid, then it should be FULLY legal. After all if firm/MPAA/whatnot can have region code, and import cheap from China, or even outsource jobs, then everybody should be allowed to do it. Globalisation and import/export as logn as custom are paid, should be fully legal. And if they (publisher) lose money on that, bad luck.

I fail to understand how the first-sale doctrine does not apply just because the first sale was outside the US. I would understand completely if ICE was coming after him for not paying duties or tariffs, but what does copyright have to do with anything here? He didn't make copies. He simply resold books the publisher was already paid for.

I fail to understand how the first-sale doctrine does not apply just because the first sale was outside the US. I would understand completely if ICE was coming after him for not paying duties or tariffs, but what does copyright have to do with anything here? He didn't make copies. He simply resold books the publisher was already paid for.

The First Sale Doctrine doesn't apply to copyrighted good manufactured outside the U.S. The relevant case law is Pearson v. Liu, decided in the district court of the Southern District of New York. The case was appealed to the 2nd circuit court of appeals which affirmed [findlaw.com] the lower court's decision. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court which denied to hear the case, letting the decision of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to stand.

Apologies for replying to my own post, but I must make a correction. The link I provided was not for the Pearson v Liu case, but rather for the current case mentioned in the article. I was therefore in error in stating that the Supreme Court allowed that ruling to stand. The more relevant case, as it has already reached the Supreme Court is Omega v Costco [wikipedia.org], a 9th Circuit Court opinion which held the same thing: the First Sale Doctrine does NOT apply to copyrighted goods manufactured abroad. This opinion was appealed to the Supreme Court, but Justice Kagan recused herself, as she had previously argued the case for the government. The result was a 4-4 decision, which meant that the 9th Circuit decision stood, but it doesn't set a national precedent. This present case might well settle that precedent once and for all.

can it apply to books? and if so, does it still apply if the book was violating copyright? but how about if it WASN'T violating copyright where it was originally sold? It's a complicated issue. From a purely ethical/common sense standpoint it should be ok for him to sell it, but there may be laws bought onto the books that prevent it.

According to TFA, this book was legally published abroad by a subsidiary of the American publisher. I don't see it as very complicated at all: the copy was legal, so it should be legal to import it.

That would make sense. Except that U.S. Copyright law explicitly forbids it:

602. Infringing importation of copies or phonorecords

(a) Importation into the United States, without the authority of the owner of copyright under this title, of copies or phonorecords of a work that have been acquired outside the United States is an infringement of the exclusive right to distribute copies or phonorecords under section 106, actionable under section 501.

What's not clear is whether the First Sale Doctrine applies to books manufactured outside of the U.S. And that's the real question that's being put in front of the SC. If they decide that the First Sale Doctrine applies in this case, then the importation of these books for resale will be legal. If it doesn't apply, then it won't be legal.

Every level of the textbook business is about manipulation, lies, and control, from the publisher to the campus bookstore.

I researched the actual cost of textbooks once, and found industry websites with cost breakdowns which swore, up and down, that the profit margin on textbooks was 1%. I shit you not. You buy the 13th edition of your text for a retail price of $298, a book that's been out for 15 years and hundreds of printings, and they expect you to believe that even *now*, on the 13th edition, the publisher made well under $3 per copy.

On the retail side, I worked for a campus bookstore and my wife was their night manager. After they let me off for total lack of available work, I decided to just sell them books I found on ebay and bought from other students. After I sold them several dozen they fired my wife and banned me from the store based on their unwritten and inconsistently enforced policy that a student can sell only one copy of a particular title to them. Why do they care? I have no idea. The only time I sold them books was the two week period after spring semester buyback but before summer classes; I gave them more copies of these books, at prices and quantities they set, during a period when their used stock was already at it's yearly maximum but still not high enough for their liking. There were no other copies for them to acquire from students, and awful NC state laws forbid them from acquiring more used copies on Amazon, eBay, etc. For this they treated me like a criminal, fired my wife, and even made allusions to whether we'd stolen the books despite the fact that there are cameras, audits, and never less than 3 people at the registers.

It was all about control; what I did was good for their business, and they didn't give a shit. I was making money in a place they thought only they were allowed to make money. Even though it made them even more money than it made me, they hated me for it and considered it abusive.

How many textbooks did this Thai student actually sell in America? Was it 8,000 textbooks that normally sell for 75 bucks a piece in the U.S.? Or is this yet another case of someone selling a mere "handful" of copyrighted IP - perhaps 10 - 30 units - and getting slapped with a stupidly large six-digit fine for it? U.S. copyright holders, as well as U.S. courts, don't seem to have any sense of proportion when it comes to these things. How can you fine some 600,000 Dollars for something that damaged you to the tune of - maybe - a few hundred dollars, if at all. I hope the Thai kid wins this case. Whatever he did, it can't be worth a 600K fine. Also, if the kid was struggling so much financially that he needed to resort to selling textbooks to get by, how the hell is this kid going to pay the 600K fine?

He had somewhere between $900,000 and $1,200,000 in revenue (no idea what the profit margin was).

Argument seems to be that 17 U.S.C. S 109(a) says:

Notwithstanding the provisions of section 106(3), the ownerof a particular copy or phonorecord lawfully made under this title,or any person authorized by such owner, is entitled, without theauthority of the copyright owner, to sell or otherwise dispose ofthe possession of that copy or phonorecord.

And something manufactured overseas isn't "lawfully made under this title" is what the Court of Appeals ruled.

Silly man, he did not understand that globalisation is for corporates to exploit, it is not for individuals to benefit from.

Companies do this all the time: buy goods or get them made where ever in the world it is cheapest for them to do so. They then sell them at different prices in different countries: price it too high in India and you don't get sales, price it too low in Europe and you loose potential profit.

They can't possibly have customers doing the same thing - it would damage their profits and the CEO's bonus would have to be cut. So they adopt all manner of tactics to stop us from benefiting from globalisation in the way that they do: * region coding on DVDs [wikipedia.org], * refusal to service equipment if imported [cruisersforum.com] (even if identical ones are sold in the country), sue non approved importers [bbc.co.uk],... All designed to distort the free market

I would mind paying more for something that I buy in England if it were made with English labour paid English wages. What I object to is them paying third world people slave rates and charging me top dollar - I don't like the hypocrisy of it all.

Well, GP didn't say that "free market is a lie", so why are you asking him to account for someone else's words?

I do regularly say that free market is a lie. Even so, I don't see a problem in pointing out the obvious inconsistencies in corporate attitudes toward free market and globalization: it's clearly good when it benefits them (i.e. manufacture cheap, sell expensive), but it's evil, and - in this case - explicitly illegal to turn the tables and have consumers shop around. And don't even get them started on free movement of labor. While I'm not a believer in free market in general, this arrangement is actually worse than a pure free market - I'll take no regulation over regulation that is intentionally screwing me up, even though ideally I'd prefer regulation designed to protect me instead.

Being a student in London UK this all looks incomprehensible to me. I also find it extremely weird that you still like to call your land 'land of the free'. I'd be interested to learn more about this and other US "cartels" in education, media, health and commercial areas.

It's getting to the point that you can never be sure whether a copy is legal or not. If you haven't read the original contract between the author and the publisher and the distributor you cannot be sure if you are acquiring a legal copy. Reading the copyright page in a book does not always state whether it is legal to distribute in such and such a country.

Now if he had pirated the book, since he was a student of few means, he would not be in this situation where he would have the need to sell the book.

If you cannot resell a legally purchased copy then it's best you pirate and be done with it. I don't subscribe to the idea that there is a grey market.

Wow. I don't see how that's legal within the U.S. border, since if you buy something, you have every right to covert it back to cash through the used market. (Next I guess they'll want to outlaw the sale of used CDs, DVDs, or videogames.)

I don't understand lefties being incapable of understanding that the point of doing business is to make money. Nobody is stopping you from going into business for yourself, or investing in these greedy corporations and sharing some of the dividends.